


Guiding Angel

by SophieRipley



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Death, Guardian Angels, One Shot, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 23:25:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7661290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SophieRipley/pseuds/SophieRipley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nicholas Wilde-knight of the fox army-falls in battle against his people's most hated foe. The angel he meets afterward is...not what he expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guiding Angel

Sir Nicholas Wilde had always been taught that when he died, an angel from the Other Realms would come to collect him.  As a fox he already had a proverbial toe in the door; after all, a fox’s powers came from _somewhere_.  But the angel would still come to collect him, because the Road of Recurrence would not open to anyone but a Seslyhim, one of the primordial angel-gods.  

 _“The angel will come when you need him to, Nicky,”_ his mother had told him after his father’s death when Nicholas was young, _“and he’ll carry your soul to the Path of the Dead.  He will help you, your very own fox angel to guide you to your afterlife.”_   She had always spoken of the Seslyhim with great respect, and her words made him no longer fear death.

It was why he made such a good soldier.  He had never been particularly strong, but he was smart as a whip and feared no blade.  The risks he took in the heat of battle combined with his great training to ensure all foes who came to him fell before his blade.  It was an edge he needed in this endless, fruitless war, because small though the lapines may have been they made fierce and staggeringly talented warriors.

Vulpines had only size on them, and that was why Nicholas’s kin was losing the war.  Yesterday they arrived at the lapines’ capital after several weeks of hard marching and brutal combat from every direction; the generals in charge had decided that the best way to win the war was to punch through the country and take Bunnyburrow.  The idea was that if you hold the seat of power, you would control the rest of the country, so they ordered the entire army to pierce the lapine country like a hardened spear through plate armor.

The generals planned for a siege, and understandably so.  They expected rabbit tenacity to be exhibited in a difficult but ultimately winnable siege, but what the army had faced instead was a display of rabbit courage.  They arrived in sight of the walls of Bunnyburrow to find not a barred portcullis and reinforced guarded walls but ranks upon ranks of the most elite bunny samurai they’d ever seen. 

The only good part of the fight that morning was that it was over quickly.

The first attack horn sounded at dawn.  The last vulpine solider stopped fighting just two hours later; those who survived were badly maimed, their Gifts shattered, armor broken, and weapons fallen. 

Nicholas lay bleeding into his chain maille from more wounds than he could count; he could feel himself growing cold and light-headed from the blood loss, and he gazed at the smoldering bodies laying around him.  They had been rabbits only minutes earlier, clad in the glazed steel plate armor their kind were famous for, but Nicholas had seen to it that their lives ended before his own.

They would find glory in the afterlife.

The problem was, Nicholas hated killing them.  He had been conscripted, most foxes in this army had been, and nobody had asked if he was sensitive to the lapine cause.  He fought only because his oaths forbade him from disobeying his superiors’ orders; that was the trick of truenaming magick.  Though Nicholas was forced to participate in the fight, his oaths were vague enough to allow him to fight how he wished, and thanks to that he went into battle very defensively, using a glaive to defend the soldiers around him instead of the arming sword at his side to kill in close quarters.  Even his Gift was kept unused until—like moments ago—he had no choice but to use it.

When Nicholas was very young, barely an adult at fifteen, he lived in a small village at the border between the lapine and vulpine countries.  It was a rare mixed village, with both predators and prey, including foxes and bunnies.  The war hadn’t started yet, but tensions were felt even by the children, so many prey were bullied.  Even Nicholas, back then, had participated somewhat in bullying, a fact that he’d come to regret. 

One evening, he’d been wandering the streets looking for a sympathetic vixen to woo.  His hunt was disrupted when he heard shouting coming from down an alley; when he ran to discover what the commotion was, he arrived on the scene in time to see another younger fox, one of the Grey boys he’d never interacted with, leaving in the opposite direction with a weasel.  They left behind a bunny doe, maybe seven years old.  She was crumpled in a heap, bleeding from the face and neck.  Nicholas had no medical knowledge but he tried to help her by tearing off his tunic and pressing it to what turned out to be rather severe claw wounds.  It didn’t work very well.

At least the kitten didn’t die alone.

Nicholas never had bullied a rabbit again after that, and the encounter would define the adult he’d become.

He had become very well-known for his tactics during the war, had in fact turned more than one important battle from a total lapine victory to a near draw because of his clever maneuvering, and so the rabbit general had sent a full squad against him alone.  Nicholas’s glaive shattered against their armor because it had been reinforced with ancient lapine wards, and his own armor broke apart against their superior swords.  He was forced into an aggressive posture because defense was failing and his oaths did not allow him to surrender.

His Gift was the last resort.

Surrounded by rabbits clad in glittering plate and wielding the claw-like curved swords they were so good at forging, the fox lit on fire.  It started in the palms of his paws and spread to each wound he’d suffered, the blood pouring from his body igniting like oil, and he threw the emerald flames around him in a wave of destruction.

The rabbits were not prepared.  After all, it was unheard-of for a fox to wield fire.

Though they fell to his flames, the wounds were too great.  Nicholas fell and got to watch his army’s defeat as he died.  The end was very near, and he couldn’t help but think about his mother’s words.  What would his angel look like?  Would he understand why Nick had resisted his oaths?  Would a fox spirit believe that Nick was deserving of a good afterlife?

His breath was shallow, and it was cold.  Minutes before, it had been warm here. 

The battleground began to fade from his view and his breath caught painfully in his chest, the agony of his wounds piercing the adrenaline that numbed it for a bare moment before his body failed entirely, and Sir Nicholas Wilde gasped his last breath.

When next he opened his eyes, he was still on the battlefield.  Only, all sign of battle was gone.  Even the city a short ways away seemed to have gone, replaced by graceful green hills.  The smell of blood and fear was gone, replaced by the subtle scents of grass, wildflowers, and dirt.  The sun wasn’t in view, the field comfortably dim in a kind of twilight, and Nicholas sat up gingerly, discovering his wounds and his armor were gone, replaced by a comfortable silk tunic and kilt.

“Well, well, well.  Nicholas Wilde, at long last.”  The voice came from behind him and above him, a gentle, distinctly feminine sound.  Nicholas turned to look and discovered he was underneath a tree.  It was yew, appropriately, and nestled in one of its lower branches, swinging her long feet, was a rabbit, clad only in a delicate necklace of silver.

She was very pretty, for a rabbit.  Her fur was grey, her ears long and black-tipped, and her eyes a rare violet.  Even her smile was attractive:  one of her front teeth was shorter than the other, but it made the soft grin endearing and somehow trustworthy.

Nick stared at him for longer than he meant, startled into silence.  The doe merely smiled back quietly, waiting.  She seemed to understand he needed a moment.

When his wits recovered, Nicholas stood and offered a short bow.

“You have me at disadvantage, madam,” said Nicholas.  “May I ask your name?”

Apparently, Nicholas was amusing.  The rabbit laughed.

“You know who I am, Nick.”  She hopped out of the tree, landing delicately next to him, and stood at her full height with her paws resting on her hips.  “You can call me Judy.”

Nick’s heart clenched.  This had to be in-between realm, and he knew she was an angel of the dead, a Seslyhim, but he’d clearly done something very wrong.  A fox was supposed to meet him here, and it was his natural enemy.

“Don’t look so terrified, Nicholas,” said Judy gently, putting a paw on his arm.  “I’m not here to hurt you.”

Nicholas pulled away from her, gently.

“How can I not be scared?”  His voice was quiet and deceptively calm.  “I’ve spent a career in the military slaughtering your kind, trying to take your land and your freedom.  My enemy comes to me even in death.”

“That’s not true, Nick.”  Judy stepped back and leaned against the tree.  “You spent a career obeying a truenamed oath, one you couldn’t betray directly.  Furthermore, you did everything you could to get around it indirectly.  Remember the bunny kittens you helped escape?”

“That wasn’t heroism.”  Nicholas crossed his arms and looked away uncomfortably.  “They were children, they had no place there.  I couldn’t not show them the way out of that bunker; anyone else would have done the same.”

“But they didn’t; _you_ did.  At great risk to yourself.”

Nicholas took a long breath and let it out.

“Maybe.  How do you know about that, anyway?  Are you all-knowing?”  Nicholas looked over to her, and was disconcerted to find her stifling a chuckle.  There was a delicate blush visible in her ears.

“Of course not, Nick.  I was with you every step of the way.  Hidden between the moments.  I watched and waited, from the moment you became a man.” Her sweet smile did nothing to stem his confusion, and Nicholas’s frown made that obvious.  Before he could ask for clarity, she took a breath and explained.  “Everyone gets a personal angel who helps ease them into the afterlife.  In order to do our jobs, we follow you.  Observe your life, protect you when you are meant to be protected, guide you when you need guidance.  We are your guardian angel, and when you die we guide you one last time.”

Nicholas looked away, considering her words.  It didn’t match the legends he’d been told, but if he was honest with himself, that should make sense; after all, nobody came back from death.  Their stories were only best guesses, nothing more.

“So…how does it work?  What decides who an angel guides?  Is it random selection?  You draw lots?”  He didn’t turn back to her, but he could hear the doe giggle. 

“Not at all,” chuckled Judy.  “We guide the person who impacted our lives most.  Each soul that passes into the spirit realm must undergo two trials; first, we walk the Road of Memories to learn who we are.  Then, we choose a soul we believe changed us the most during our lives and we guide them, from the time they become an adult until their deaths.”

Nick shook his head and looked back at her incredulously. 

“How does that even work?  By the time you die, that person would already be well into adulthood.”  The tone of his voice was almost hostile, and he swallowed thickly when he stopped talking, afraid of scaring—or offending—the angel.  She smiled, though.

“Time is not linear in the spirit realm, Nick.”

“I see.  Then…why me?  What did I do for you?  I don’t recognize you at all; I’ve never interacted with mid-twenties rabbit does before.”  His brow furrowed in confusion.

“Oh, Nick.”  Judy’s smile faded.  “I was younger when you knew me.  Benefit of being a spirit:  you can change your appearance.”

“That doesn’t help me much, Miss Judy,” complained Nicholas.  She shook her head.

“You helped me more than anyone else in my life.  I was a child, and I was dying.  You made sure I didn’t die alone.”  The words pierced him like an arrow, staggering him so badly that his knees gave out and he hit the ground heavily.  Nicholas was silent and staring for a long time, his mind racing, trying to come to terms with it.

Eventually, Judy approached him from behind, wrapping her arms around his neck and resting her cheek against his head.  She stayed like that, quiet, for a long moment before speaking.

“I know you think you failed me,” whispered Judy.  “I’ve seen you beat yourself up about it your whole adult life.  But please believe me when I say that your failure to save my life was absolutely not a failure to help me.  Can you imagine how terrifying it is for a child to die?  I was scared, Nick, and you came to help.  You spoke to me like a person, and you reassured me in my darkest hour. 

“I died calm.  That made all the difference.”

She let Nicholas cry for as long as he needed, and when he was finally calm again, she pulled him to his feet and offered him her hand.

 

“You helped me once, Nicholas Wilde.  Now let me help you.  The Road of Memories awaits.”

 

Nick hesitated only slightly before taking her hand and stepping with her into what came next.

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired in part by Mitch Albom's book The Five People You Meet In Heaven. Decent read.


End file.
